A student faked his kidnapping in an effort to draw parental attention away from the fact he was failing English, according to a recent report from the Johns Creek Patch.

Aftab Aslam, 19, disappeared on April 27 at 10 a.m. “Aslam’s family reported that they had received a phone text stating that he had been kidnapped,” a press release from city offices stated.

The report brought both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the mix. From that point, the investigators quickly discovered that Aslam had been the purchaser of the phone from which the text was sent.

The Georgia Gwinnett College student had already failed his college English course once before — good job making sure he was college-ready there, Georgia Public Schools — and couldn’t bear putting his parents through it again.

The police and family issued several appeals for the teen’s life. Little did they know, he was inside of a tent in an open Forsyth County field. He came home eight days later after a good rain and a drop in temperatures, and that’s when authorities confirmed they weren’t after a missing person, but a student who faked his own kidnapping.

Aslam initially stuck with his story through the first round of questions, claiming he’d been drugged and kept prisoner. Under “cross examination,” however, he folded and coughed up the entire plot.

The teen — now technically an adult — was charged with three felony counts: false statements, tampering with evidence, and terroristic threatening — against himself. (Careful what you say, folks.)